Actor-comedian Billy Eichner says his career got off to a much slower start than it should have because Hollywood producers passed him over, telling him he’s “too gay.”
Eichner appeared on Sunday’s Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast to talk about his upcoming gay romcom film, Bros, and his online series Billy on the Street.
While talking about Bros, being touted as the first gay romance comedy released by a major studio, Eichner talked of his early days trying to break into TV and how he was repeatedly shot down by talent scouts and producers because he was “too New York,” a euphemism, he claimed, for being too gay, Mediaite reported.
“I had a live stage show that I did in New York, which is where the Billy on the Street videos started. I would show those videos on a screen. This is before YouTube even existed. This is like 2004, 2005,” Eichner told O’Brien.
Once his shows began gaining an audience, Eichner noted that folks from TV would occasionally show up and tell him how great his show was. But it just wouldn’t translate outside New York.
“But then an interesting thing happened where a lot of folks in the industry would come and they would acknowledge that I was talented or that they thought I was funny — that the audience was laughing a lot, that I was unique and this, that, and the other thing, but it was always, you know, ‘We don’t know what to do with you. You’re very New York,” Eichner exclaimed.
“And a lot of times in both overt ways and subtle ways, I was sent the message that I was just too gay,” Eichner continued. “I was being openly gay on stage. I was talking about gay sex. Now everyone’s talking about gay sex. But this is 2003. Right?”
Eichner said he finally got beyond that critique by proving that his videos were getting millions of views online when they went “viral and very viral.”
The comedian said he was able to show that he was getting millions of views, and not just from New Yorkers, but from everywhere.
“That’s when they finally put me on TV. I needed those numbers to point to and say, ‘Hey, I have proof that I am not this little niche thing that you assume I am because I’m gay,” he noted.
Eichner is not the only celeb to say he was blackballed because he is gay. Actress Anne Heche, who died from injuries from a car accident in August, claimed in her memoir that she was blacklisted because of her lesbian relationship with comedian and TV host Ellen DeGeneres.
Speaking of DeGeneres, she also seemed to suffer a blacklisting campaign of sorts just ahead of the end of her two decade-long TV talk show in May.
It is well-known that many gay actors hid their sexual proclivity from the public for decades in old Hollywood. Famed stars including Rock Hudson — who died of AIDs in 1985 — Anthony Perkins, and Montgomery Clift, and busy character actors including Victor Buono, Paul Lynde, and Robert Reed, all stayed in the closet. But it is notable that in an era such as today’s where more TV shows are pushing a radical LGBTQ agenda that some actors such as Eichner are still claiming they have faced discrimination for their sexuality.
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